How can we reinvent the wheel?

"Do not reinvent the wheel", the software engineering master warned. However, in my opinion, it is necessary to reinvent the wheel in many cases. In the popular words, it is "necessary ". Of course, the wheel of repeated invention must be especially careful, meaningful, and worthwhile, and the wheel of invention must have enough innovation.

Some days ago, a younger brother came to our company for an internship because he had no relevant experience. Then he asked how to accumulate original experience? How did I accumulate experience at that time? "Practice", I will use these two words to answer. In this line of computer technology, we must constantly practice and learn to make continuous progress. I have been writing some small software, such as wuziqi games, PHP albums, USB flash drives, personal websites, and so on, under the guidance of my interest from my undergraduate to postgraduate students, in addition, many part-time projects have been done, including the recruitment network of the former university, the enrollment Voice Query System, the background management system of a company, and a WAP streaming media application platform. In addition, I have implemented a series of algorithm programs, network storage, data mining, and distributed computing-related software. These practices have accumulated a lot of experience for me, making me very experienced and confident in my graduation job interview. In fact, most of these practices are "repeating the wheel of invention ". For me, repeated wheel inventions have accumulated experience for me, and I often learn the significance of innovation by improving or completely re-designing the wheel.

For me, in order to learn and practice, and to accumulate experience, I will repeatedly invent the wheel, improve the wheel, and create a brand new wheel. However, many people do not realize that, in many cases, the invention of the brand new wheel is based on the premise of repeating the invention of the wheel of the predecessors. Innovation requires soil, and practice is the main component of this soil. From the perspective of software engineering, considering factors such as software quality, development cost, and development cycle, we need to avoid repeating the wheel of invention. For IT companies, the core technology is often the lifeblood of the company. Because there is already a wheel, it cannot be invented. When relationships affect the survival of the company, you must invent your own wheel and keep your destiny in your hands. Think about China, general CPU, operating system, compiler, office software ..., it is because we have not invented our own wheel, and we are subject to foreign countries everywhere, and even threaten the security of our country. In the open-source field, China's contribution to the open-source field is very small, because we are all used to taking the initiative and enjoying the wheel invented by others freely, instead, they seldom repeat the invention or completely invent the wheel.

In fact, the old saying goes, "let others talk about it". Why should we repeat the invention wheel! If you start to innovate on the wheel or innovatively invent a new wheel, someone else may reinvent your wheel.

 

(Aiguille Liu/Liu aigui/aigui.liu@gmail.com)